


some curious synchrony

by aliferlia



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: M/M, Office AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-07
Updated: 2013-04-07
Packaged: 2017-12-07 20:06:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/752521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aliferlia/pseuds/aliferlia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Obligatory Shigatsu Tsuitachi fic. Fai trolls, Kurogane patrols, and Hokuto writes girls' love manga. The usual.</p>
            </blockquote>





	some curious synchrony

**Author's Note:**

> are you supposed to listen to Caramelldansen while writing smut (I'm asking for a friend ok) or...? whatever, Shigatsu Tsuitachi!verse in accordance with the CLAMP Day tweets. this...may end up having a second part, but for now it's pretty freestanding. have at.

That particular Tuesday afternoon found him in a relatively charitable mood, and so, on weathering the brunt of the initial hostilities, he opened the negotiations with what he thought constituted a rather polite review of standing policy.

‘Fill my locker with packing peanuts one more time and so help me I will skin you alive,’ he explained, levelly, as he tightened his hold on a certain co-worker’s collar with one hand and downed a cup of coffee with the other. ‘Is this in any way unclear?’

‘In a shocking turn of events, the new security guard turns out to be _assertive_!’ the girl with the hat cooed, and clapped her hands. ‘I do appreciate that in a man, you know. Ah, but - Fai-chan, are you alright? Is your face supposed to be that colour?’

The co-worker in question flapped a cheerful hand and gave a small croak. Kurogane reminded himself that murder charges were not generally positive additions to one’s CV and released him.

‘Phew!’ he said, and made a great show of settling back into his chair and massaging his throat, while the girl hurried to fan him with what appeared to be a back-issue of _Popular Mechanics_. ‘That was a close one! I didn’t know being strangled by a handsome stranger could be quite so - hmm, _invigorating_. Thank you, Hokuto-chan, I’m quite all right now.’ Patting her gently on the hand, he leaned back from his cubicle so that the late afternoon sunlight streaming in through the nearby window caught his strange bright hair. ‘That was an adventure! Tell me, friend, what did I do to deserve it?’

‘Sweet-talk will get you nowhere,’ Kurogane huffed, which, to his dismay, earned him a wolf-whistle from the hat girl and distinctly cheeky grin from the pale stranger. ‘I know it was you, damn you. Gingetsu said to watch out for the crazy blond from Planning. No more packing peanuts, you hear?’

All subsequent protests of, ‘But they’re _friendly_ packing peanuts!’ were ignored, and requests to examine in closer detail the small ballpoint faces painstakingly drawn on to all the blue peanuts (‘Well, the blue ones are the prettiest ones, obviously!’) were similarly disregarded.  ‘The fuck is your _name_ , anyway?’ Kurogane demanded. ‘You’re going on my list.’

‘Ooh! You have a list?’ the pale man enquired, and batted at the utility belt slung low on Kurogane’s hips. ‘Do you keep it in here? Or is it on your phone? How exciting!’

‘I haven’t made it yet,’ Kurogane snapped, flustered, and grabbed hold of the man’s thin wrist. ‘I will _make_ a list, and then you will be on it, and that will be,’ he flicked through a mental list of adjectives, settled on, ‘not good. Give me your damn name.’ He bumped the man’s nametag with a knuckle, squinted at it. ‘Flourite? Is that it? The hell kind of name is that?’

The man beamed. ‘Oh, that’s right, yes!’ he said, with what seemed to be complete sincerity. ‘How observant of you! I can see why they hired you - you’re very smart. Yes, I’m Fai D Flourite, and it’s a pleasure to meet you! If you don’t mind, what’s your name? We can’t just keep calling you That One New Security Guard.’

‘I thought we were calling him Tall, Dark, and Handsome,’ the girl with the hat observed idly from her cubicle. ‘Or wait, was that Gin-chan? I lose track.’

‘No, no, Gingetsu-san was Sign Me Up For The Next War,’ Flourite reminded her, still beaming up at Kurogane: Kurogane dropped his hand as though it had burned him. ‘It’s Yasha-san who’s Tall, Dark, and Handsome, remember? And you, New Security Guard-san - what’s your name?’

‘Kuma-chan,’ the hat girl suggested. ‘A big, strong, grizzly bear who’ll eat us up if we don’t behave! Scary, scary Kuma-san!’

‘It’s Kurogane,’ Kurogane snapped. ‘Personnel are to use polite and office-appropriate methods of address _only_. That’s in the company handbook. Chapter 9, Etiquette in the Workplace, sub-section 9d -’

‘No,’ Flourite interrupted, smiling. In that flood of late golden light his hair seemed almost colourless. ‘No, I don’t think he’s scary at all, Hokuto-chan. His bark is much worse than his bite. He’s just a big old grumpy puppy, isn’t he?’

Kurogane would later insist that he was entirely justified in smacking the pale man upside the head. He did not appreciate the _SUPER LUCKY A+_ stamp with which the hat-girl ‘tenderly adorned his fevered brow all streaked with virile sweat’ in praise for his efforts. On the plus side, the next morning saw only a single packing peanut lodged in his locker. Its little ballpoint face had managed to capture an expression of agonising hopefulness: the pitiful scrap of paper it guarded read only, _Lunch today, Grumpy Puppy?_

‘Not if you fucking paid me, dumbass,’ he replied while on his rounds.

‘Awwww, too bad,’ the Flourite guy said. ‘Never mind - I’m sure you’re a very busy puppy. How about coffee tomorrow, hmm?’

Kurogane flicked the peanut at the Flourite guy’s eye with fully-merited viciousness. The hat girl wolf-whistled again. Flourite just beamed.

*

All further attempts at negotiating a ceasefire over the course of the week were thwarted with extreme prejudice. The dastardly affair of the packing peanuts concluded only after a small packing peanut family had amassed on the small coffee table in the security break-room, each with a mournful ballpoint face and a hastily-scrawled note. They were eventually rescued and provided with a good home by Gingetsu’s boy, who stopped by with a bento and helpful advice every lunch break.

‘Fighting a losing battle there,’ Gingetsu remarked to Kurogane the following Monday, eyeing the slew of _I hope you’re having a great day!_ and _Good morning, Grumpy Puppy_! notes heaped around the coffee mugs. ‘I’m telling you, the blond guy’s crazy. Hey, it’s your first time taking the late shift this evening, right?’

‘Yeah,’ Kurogane replied warily.

‘Shit,’ was Gingetsu’s only reply.

The Head of Security was rather more forthcoming. ‘This is your flashlight,’ she explained. ‘This is your earpiece, this is your locator beacon, this is the number you call when you want to report anything out of line. Your movements are automatically logged every five minutes, and you’re on a randomised route that takes through most of the building and resets every half-hour to forty-five minutes. Your checkpoints show up in your visor, and you log your fingerprints in at each one. Got it?’

‘Don’t have a visor,’ Kurogane said, eyeing the flashlight with deep mistrust: it resembled a Wii remote and appeared to have seventeen separate settings. ‘The hell kind of flashlight is this? Is this a blacklight setting?’

‘Oh, right, visor,’ the Head said, cheerfully, and handed him a discreet headset with a small plastic viewer window. ‘Attaches to your earpiece - there you go, little red button, that’s it. You’re a natural.’ He yelped as the tiny viewscreen crackled to life; she eyed him. ‘Look, we’re a bit - specialised here, you know? The President puts a lot of funding into making sure that the Shigatsu Tsuitachi has the best security department in the country, so we’re pretty cutting-edge. I’m sure you know all about our long-standing rivalry with the Fei Wong Quality Sweets Company. No one wants a repeat of last year, that’s for sure.’

‘Doesn’t the Fei Wong Quality Sweets Company make, you know -’ here Kurogane searched in vain for a less pathetic paraphrase ‘- sweets?’

She narrowed her eyes at him. He found himself quailing a moment before he remembered to suck in his stomach and straighten up. ‘Yeah,’ she said, as though he were slightly stupid. ‘Sweets. Sure. Look, I’m only gonna say this once, kid: don’t fuck up.’

‘Not a damn kid,’ he muttered.

She set her  mug down on the table with a distinct _clink._ ‘Excuse me?’

‘Sir, yes, sir!’ he yelped.

The late shift proved to be far less exciting than previously anticipated. After his first few sweeps of the building had passed without incident, save for a brief but wholly dignified argument with one of the check-in points that refused to read his thumbprint, he took to humming idly under his breath to pass the time. The high-rise building was certainly one of the cleanest and most efficient he had ever worked in, with a security system almost smart enough to do his job for him. He grunted in distaste at the dark nodes that concealed the motion-sensitive CCTV cameras, rubbed the back of his neck. He had to admit that the dark, discreet uniform the company had supplied him with was surprisingly efficient, allowing for uninhibited motion and an easy stride: but the newfangled headpiece, night-vision or no, was no replacement for a good, old-fashioned earpiece, and he missed the reassuring weight of a gun at his hip. He itched to get in a few good blows with his truncheon, but felt that swinging it around like a kid with a plastic sword would be unprofessional. He might not be a private bodyguard anymore, but he figured he could still damn well act like one.

It was well past midnight before anything untoward caught his eye: the glow of a lone computer, and next to it a coffee mug. He frowned and went to have a look. He recognised the cubicles too late - this was the planning department. Instantly on alert against the possibility of some ridiculous boobytrap, he leant over and prodded at the mouse with the tip of his flashlight. The screensaver, a simple animation of the Shigatsu Tsuitachi logo, was replaced instantly with what seemed to be an awful lot of raw code. He frowned.

‘Boo!’ said a voice in his ear.

Kurogane categorically did not shriek.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry, Kuro-sama - did I give you a fright?’ the blond guy asked, patting him on the shoulder as he narrowly staved off hyperventilation. ‘Hmm, you’re not a very good watch-dog if you get scared so easily, are you?’

Kurogane swung round and got a good tight fistful of collar, hefted high. ‘You. Blond guy. Name.’ Kurogane demanded, shining his flashlight clean into the guy’s eyes. ‘ _Now_.’

‘The big bad watch-dog doesn’t remember me?’ the guy wailed, wriggling in Kurogane’s grip. ‘It’s me! Fai D Flourite, at your service! I thought we had a _connection_!’

‘Oh, hell,’ Kurogane groaned, and dropped him: massaged his temple. ‘What did I do in a past life to deserve this?’

‘Is this why you haven’t been replying to my love-notes?’ the idiot cried in piteous tones from somewhere down on the floor. ‘I thought you were just shy! If you’d only _told_ me then I would have been much more obvious! Should I start bringing you a bento every day? Or should I - hmm, no, coffee not a good idea, is it? I wouldn’t have any tomorrow if I were you, by the way, Kuro-puppy.’

Kurogane felt his eyebrows shoot up. ‘You _fucker_ ,’ he growled. ‘You’re the one who’s been putting salt in the coffee creamer, aren’t you?’

‘Maybe,’ Fai allowed, getting to his feet and rubbing his neck in only the most token of shamefaced gestures. ‘It’s a surprise! Everyone needs to start their day with a nice bit of a surprise! Besides, all that coffee is probably bad for you, and I like to take care of my co-workers’ health! That’s the secret to a really great company, you know!’

Kurogane stared at him. In the dim glow of the monitor, Fai’s skin seemed eerily pale, his strange eyes hooded, his grin almost manic. Kurogane’s skin crawled, and for the briefest instant, prompted chiefly by the late hour and sheer exasperation, he was half-convinced that Fai was somehow inhuman. His heart shook. A phone chose that moment to begin vibrating: Fai gave a small laugh and made a dive for his cubicle, held up a blinking smartphone with an apologetic shrug.

‘I have to take this, Kuro-sama,’ he said. ‘Sorry! I’m just finishing up some work here - don’t mind me! Go back to your daring heroics!’

Kurogane wasted a moment glaring at him, then turned on his heel. ‘Next time you need to finish a project,’ he called over his shoulder, ‘either take your damn work home, or else apply for overtime and file it with the records office like a normal fucking person so that I don’t end up dying of an early heart attack.’

‘Of course, Mr Big Bad Wacthdog!’ Fai sang, and answered the call in a bright singsong. ‘Hello! Yes, Yuui, don’t worry! I’ll be home soon!’

*

Unsurprisingly, Fai didn’t apply for overtime. The second time Kurogane discovered him working late off the records led to an interesting discussion on the merits of death via asphyxiation versus death via immediate and unrepentant defenestration, which latter option was only precluded by the fact that the windows proved to be impossible to open from the inside.

‘I am fully willing to smash this damn thing open purely so that I can have the pleasure of throwing you out of it,’ Kurogane told him.

‘I only wanted to say hello,’ Fai protested, straining to stay on tiptoe as Kurogane got a tighter grip on his collar and hefted him higher: his long white fingers clutched cold at Kurogane’s wrists. ‘There’s no call to turn into a growly puppy!’

‘You gave me a damn heart attack! Jumping out from behind a damn pot-plant like that - what the hell were you thinking?’

‘Oh, of course, I forgot you were a scaredy-puppy,’ Fai said, blinking innocently. Kurogane noticed for the first time that his eyes were very blue. ‘You just look so noble and dashing doing rounds all on your own, you know, like a - like a lone wolf, charging down on your pray through the snowy forests of -’

Kurogane sighed and settled Fai down against the windowsill - quite gently, he thought. ‘Please shut up,’ he said, leaning his forehead against the wall, which only jolted his eyepiece and made it crackle.

Fai reached up and patted him on the shoulder. ‘There, there, Kuro-sama,’ he said, stretching his long, lanky legs out in front of him, and leaning back against the glass. ‘I think we should have some coffee! Just don’t use the milk. It’s a bit blue.’

The third night-time incident involved a plush toy of the truly obnoxious talking variety carefully settled on a windowsill along Kurogane’s midnight route. Kurogane felt that after catching sight of its glowing yellow eyes and sparkly pink wings, and being hailed moreover with a cheery, ‘Howdy, y’all!’, he was justified in yelping and then lashing out at it viciously with his truncheon before noticing Fai giggling behind a vending machine and lurching after him in turn: but Fai, having learned his lesson from being hoisted up by the collar several times over the past few weeks, ducked and danced nimbly away, grinning like a cat and cheering, ‘Kuro-sama vanquished the evil Kero-chan!’

Kurogane saw no other solution to the entire affair than to drag Fai down to the surveillance room in the hopes of making him stay put while he erased all records of his humiliation. Sadly, even when surrounded by banks of bright and shiny television screens, which Kurogane had hoped would distract him for at _least_ a solid minute, he seemed incapable of keeping quiet.

‘Doesn’t it get cold in here?’ he asked, planting himself firmly in the spare chair and testing it enthusiastically to see how well it squeaked. ‘I’m freezing! You should keep a blanket with you, or a hot water bottle. You know what they say - it’s easier to prevent a cold than cure one!’

Kurogane was busy isolating the video records from the eighth floor north corridor over the past half-hour and remembering dismally that he hadn’t been an awful lot of attention when the Head had explained the system to him; the CCTV cameras were Gingetsu’s especial province, and Kurogane did his best to ignore them. ‘No one says that.’

Fai had apparently discovered that the chair had wheels: with a whoop of delight, he kicked off from the desk and careened around the little room like a ball bearing in a box. ‘Ah, well, you know what they say - today’s inspirations are tomorrow’s quotations!’ he cried, throwing his hands in the air as he reached the far wall and kicked off again. ‘We should have races in these! Why haven’t we had races in these yet?’

‘No one fucking says that quotations crap,’ Kurogane grumbled, reaching out without looking to grab the back of the chair while tapping at the touchscreen keyboard with his free hand. ‘Quit spewing bullshit, you idiot. You can’t just make up _proverbs_. That’s why they’re proverbs.’

Unperturbed by having had his joyride cut short, Fai scooted the chair closer to Kurogane, leaned in over his shoulder. ‘You’re never going to get anywhere in life with that kind of narrow-minded approach to creativity,’ he scolded him. ‘You have to think outside the dogbox, Kuro-puppy!’ He considered the screens a moment. ‘You do know that even if you do delete it, I could still tell everyone else about -’ Kurogane whipped his head around, found Fai’s face very close, glared at him ‘- about your extremely brave reaction to our friend Kero-chan.’

For a moment Kurogane could only stare into Fai’s sweet, guileless eyes, determinedly creased up in a smile. He looked down in a rare moment of uncertainty, feeling suddenly flushed, and found himself blinking at Fai’s sharp collarbones. Mouth dry, he turned away, tapped at the touchscreen. ‘What do I have to do to get you to shut up?’ he asked, steadily.

Behind him, Fai clapped his hands. ‘ _Well_ ,’ he began -

*

‘Oh, _hell_ no,’ Kurogane said, and got a face full of silly string.

‘Congratulations!’ Fai and Hokuto crowed. Fai handed him a small pink cake in a glittery box. Hokuto took advantage of his distraction to plant a loud kiss on his cheek and snap a selfie with her phone as she did so.

‘What the hell is _this_ for?’ Kurogane demanded, waving the cake around.

‘Oh, well, that you put in your mouth and you eat,’ Hokuto said, quickly instagramming her photograph. ‘Can I tag you in this? I need baa-chan to think I have a boyfriend so she’ll get off my case for like two seconds.’

Ignoring this last, Kurogane pointed an outraged finger at Fai, who was readying another round of silly string. ‘You just said I had to show up here! That was all! There was nothing about - about - confectionary!’ He squinted down at the packaging: as best as he could make out from the flowery lettering lodged between glittery curlicues and what appeared to be obnoxiously twee bat mascots, it seemed to contain some kind of castella cake. ‘Isn’t this from the Fei Wong Quality Sweets Company?’

‘A silly little inter-company rivalry isn’t nearly as important as Kuro-sama’s three-month anniversary of working here!’ Fai crowed, and threw his arms around Kurogane’s neck. ‘I just thought you might like to celebrate this momentous landmark in your career at the Shigatsu Tsuitachi, where we make a special effort to treat every employee like family! Here, hold this leek.’

‘What? Why? Agh!’

‘Perfect!’ Fai said, spinning away to fiddle with his camera. ‘Yes, that came out well. Oh, sorry, was the flash a bit bright? Hokuto-chan, how am I going to say Kuro-sama is my rich and famous boyfriend if you’ve already said that he’s _your_ rich and famous boyfriend, hmm?’

‘Hmm,’ Hokuto said, gnawing on her lip and appearing to think deeply about the conundrum before shooting one hand up into the air with great excitement. ‘Ooh, ooh, I know! Duel to the death for his affections?’

‘That’s a great idea!’ Fai said, clapping his hands excitedly and tugging the leek from Kurogane’s hands. ‘Oh, Hokuto-chan, I knew you were my favourite.’

‘It could be a really evocative scene if we shoot it under, like, cherry blossoms or something,’ Hokuto enthused, grabbing a pencil and setting to work on a sketch. ‘While the fragile Kuroko-hime watches from afar, her heart wavering between her two bold suitors, each equally attractive and stylish, each equally skilled at piloting the giant samurai mech that defend her homeland from the alien interlopers! Oh, this will be marvellous! It’s a rule that the winner has to cradle the loser dramatically in their arms and whisper _goodbye…my friend…_ before going on the run from the remaining vengeful twin sibling, though - and oh! Speaking of whom! Hi, Yuu-chan!’

For someone new had poked their head in around the door. ‘Fai! Fai, are you in? Are we still on for - oh, a party! Cool.’

Kurogane, still dazzled from the camera flash, took a moment to scrub at his eyes. When the hallucination failed to disappear, he let out a groan. ‘Oh, God, there’s two of you,’ he said, and resigned himself to an early and humiliating death.

The other blond idiot’s eyes widened, and he dropped into a stiff, low bow. ‘On behalf of the Flourite family, I would like to register my formal apology for any inconveniences my brother may have caused you,’ he said. ‘Please don’t kill me. Or him. Don’t kill either of us. But mostly not me.’

‘Listen to him,’ Fai said, linking his arms around his mysterious double’s neck and nuzzling at his forehead fondly. ‘Are we still going for lunch? Yay! And of course you’ll be paying. Best twin ever, am I right? Come on, let’s go!’

‘I said I’d pay half - Fai, I said - _half_! _Listen_ to me when I’m talking to you!’

‘Yes, yes, plenty of time for listening later,’ Fai said, hauling the poor beleaguered man bodily to the door. ‘Sorry to cut this short, Kuro-sama! I hope you enjoy your cake!’

And with that they vanished, the other man still mouthing a frantic _sorry_ at Kurogane over Fai’s shoulder as he was tugged from the room.

Kurogane blinked. He squinted down at Hokuto, who was pulling faces at her phone, and seemed wholly unperturbed that her madman of a co-worker had just forcibly abducted what was either a clone or a very convincing life-model decoy of some variety. ‘What just happened here?’ he checked.

‘Welllllll,’ Hokuto said, looking up from her phone with a sigh of achievement, ‘obaa-chan just told me to get a ring out of you before I start poking holes in the condoms, and that she’ll be doing background checks on your family, so it looks like she might shut up pestering me about my love life for once! Yay!’ She beamed up at him and twirled a pencil neatly between her fingers. ‘I take it all back, you totally deserve that cake. Now, do you want Kuroko-hime to be a tsundere sort of rebellious princess who’s too proud to admit her powerful attraction to the beautiful but mysterious time-travelling alien queen Fainalesca, or is she going to be all moe and have a cute little innocent crush on the valiant and manly Hokutoshimaru-dono?’

The castella cake, it turned out halfway into their brainstorming session, was delicious.

*

‘So, OK, wait, the guy from the cafeteria’s your brother?’ Kurogane checked, as they prowled the night-time corridors together.

‘Correct!’ Fai said, trundling slowly along at Kurogane’s side on a swivel chair he had liberated from some poor unfortunate soul’s office and adorned with a small red bow: in one hand he held a few pages of notepaper hastily scribbled over with the storyboards for _Hokuto-chan and Kuro-chan’_ s _Super Samurai Mech Adventure_ , and was gnawing idly at one corner. ‘And we’re super bestest-best friends and I love him and he’s the best brother ever. Your turn!’

‘My turn to what?’ Kurogane asked, flicking his flashlight to-and-fro in as professional a manner as possible, determined not to be distracted from his job by the ethereally beautiful if possibly semi-psychotic manchild scooting along beside him. He thumbed a checkpoint and watch, pleased, as the holographic locator in his eyepiece turned green. _Professional_ , he thought, pleased.

Fai gave him a nudge. ‘Share a fun fact with the class,’ he suggested. ‘Like, oh, say, what did you do before you worked here, or, you know, where you grew up, or when you had your first kiss, or why you’re apparently so good at writing girls’ love manga. Anything like that.’

‘It’s not girls’ love, it’s a historical fantasy seinen series with science-fiction undertones that just so happens to focus on the relationship between two girls,’ Kurogane said, having dutifully memorised this rebuttal at Hokuto’s insistence. ‘And I guess - eh, fine, I’ll play.’ He flicked his torch over to a corner of the corridor, saw nothing more threatening than a potted plant, confirmed that it concealed no blond maniacs: rested his hand on the empty space at his hip. He said, ‘I used to work as a bodyguard for a private security company.’

‘Ooh! Mysterious! I suppose that’s why you have such a cool, efficient, warrior-like aura,’ Fai said, nodding sagely while Kurogane rolled his eyes. ‘Did you work for any famous celebrities? Did you fall madly in love with them? Did you ever fling yourself in front of a speeding bullet?’

‘No, dumbass,’ Kurogane snapped. ‘What, you think I can just go around spilling details about my previous employers? The hell?’

‘Ah, Kuro-sama’s blushing!’ Fai sang, even though he couldn’t possibly have seen his face in the dark. ‘I bet she was a cute pop star. I bet she wrote a song about you after you cruelly jilted her, and now you hear it on the radio every morning and regret your womanising ways, and wow, I need to write this down or else Hokuto-chan will smack me for forgetting good plots again.’

Kurogane kicked his chair, which only sent Fai spinning away around the corner with a cackle of glee. ‘What about you, then?’ Kurogane yelled after him, more to shut him up than anything else. ‘It’s your turn, isn’t it? You tell me something stupid, and I pretend to listen. Sounds good, right?’

‘Right!’ Fai called, trundling hastily back up the corridor and scribbling away madly on the notepaper as he did so. ‘Right, so Kuroko-hime is transported to the future and becomes a pop star and sings a magical song of love so that Fainalesca can track her down across the space-time continuum. Got it. Hmm!’

He gave the chair a great shove, and, leapt up onto his knees, came barrelling down the corridor. Kurogane gave a yelp and caught hold of him before the chair could spin out of control, but even so, the result was a toppled chair, a broken flashlight, and a confused tangle of limbs that would result, later on, in several very impressive multi-coloured bruises.

‘My special fact is that I really like doing the night-shift with Kuro-sama!’ Fai said, struggling to disentangle his tie from Kurogane’s belt and coming as he did so quite close to crushing several very crucial parts of Kurogane’s anatomy. ‘Also, I think I just broke my ankle.’

‘Would you _watch_ where you’re going on that thing?’ Kurogane yelled, trying and failing to wriggle out from underneath Fai: who was lithe and strange and solid on top of him, whose long fingers were on Kurogane’s shoulders. ‘Stop _squirming_ , geez!’ There followed a series of careful negotiations. Eventually Kurogane managed to claw his way onto his feet; as an afterthought, he yanked Fai up after him. Fai grinned, went very suddenly still, and then fell awkwardly against Kurogane. Kurogane caught him as best he could, but Fai was stiff and frantic against him, and wriggled away urgent as a spooked cat to press himself against the wall, breathing hard.

‘I think I really have broken my ankle,’ he said, and let out a little puff of breath, tried out another grin. ‘Whoops! I really am hopeless, aren’t I?’

‘Well, that’s what you fucking get for acting like a fucking child.’ Staring uncertainly at Fai, whose slight chest was heaving hard, and not liking to touch him again and feel him flinch away in fear, Kurogane felt suddenly more useless than he had throughout all the past ninety-eight days of shining flashlights down empty corridors combined. ‘Can you walk?’ he asked: held out a hand. ‘Or can I - can I help you?’

Fai pushed himself carefully from the wall, tested his foot. ‘Oh, it’s not too bad after all,’ he said, waving a hand: then, after taking two slow steps, grabbed at Kurogane’s arm. Kurogane braced himself under his weight: he knew now that Fai was stronger and more muscular that he looked. ‘I might have to lean on the big strong watchdog for a bit,’ he admitted. ‘Oof! There we go. That’s better. What’s our next stop?’

‘Somewhere you can sit down, you dumbass,’ Kurogane said, reaching out to thumb another checkpoint, then logging his route and turning around resolutely. ‘I’m not hauling your ass around the entire fucking building when you’re not even supposed to be here. I’m almost finished this route, anyway, and I can break at half-past eleven. Come on.’

They weren’t far from the surveillance room, and Fai’s limp was not so pronounced as to slow them down too badly. Kurogane unloaded him into a chair in front of the main computer bank with no small amount of relief.

‘There should be blankets in that bottom cabinet,’ Fai said through chattering teeth, sitting back in the chair and crossing his legs so as to be able to poke gingerly at his hurt foot. ‘The one where you keep the batteries and the spare lightbulbs. Yup, there you go!’

Kurogane held up an assortment of offensively fluffy blankets. ‘These have kittens on them,’ he complained. ‘Please tell me you didn’t stock the surveillance room with blankets covered in kittens.’

‘I was worried you might get cold,’ Fai said, simply, and with a still, small smile that was nothing like anything else Kurogane had seen from him yet.

Kurogane threw a blanket at him, spiteful and afraid in his helplessness, and went to dig out a first-aid kit. He was well-trained in everything from basic emergency procedures to fairly advanced first aid, which he explained patiently to Fai while unlacing his shoe with as much care as he could manage: he hadn’t had to do any particularly fiddly work using his left hand since before it had been wounded, and so he was pleased to find that while it was somewhat trickier than he remembered, he managed to strap up the ankle without too much trouble.

‘Probably just twisted it,’ he said, settling it gently back down to the ground and looking up at Fai, who was firmly bundled up in kittens and purple fluff. ‘I’d tell you not to do anything dumb over the weekend, but this is you, so just - don’t do anything dumb and, you know. Active. This weekend.’ Fai was still staring down at him with a very simple, very sad look in his eyes. ‘And quit looking at me like that!’ Kurogane added, furious for no reason, and got up and stalked away: scowled at the computers, hunched his shoulders.

‘Kuro-sama’s very patient to put up with someone as useless as me,’ Fai offered bright and aggressively cheerful, when the silence grew too loud. ‘He really is an excellent watch-dog.’

‘Shut up, shut _up_ ,’ Kurogane complained: sat down, drew a breath, leaned back in his chair, kicked his feet up on the desk as casually as he could. ‘So, tell me something,’ he said steadily. ‘You owe me. And not something dumb, either. All I even know about you is that you’re annoying as fuck, you’ve got a twin, and apparently I did something really shitty in a past life to deserve getting stuck with you now. So. Tell me something else.’

‘You were probably a naughty puppy who chewed all the slippers and chased all the poor baby kittens,’ Fai said, laughing. ‘And so now karma’s punishing you by sending me to you.’ He laughed. ‘This ankle’s still very weak because I broke this leg in three places a few years back,’ he said. ‘I’m blind in my left eye, too, and here -’ he held up his left hand, showing the last three fingers oddly lopsided  ‘- see, I lost bits of finger.’

Kurogane nodded. ‘This happen all at once, or were you just really clumsy a whole bunch of times?’ he asked.

Fai smiled again, sly and self-mocking and viciously happy. Kurogane was started to hate it when he did that. With a sudden motion, Fai flung the blanket from his shoulders and over his face. ‘I had my reasons,’ he said, muffledly. ‘Probably they were a bit stupid, but so it goes.’ He waggled his arms. ‘I am the ghost of the kittens you chased as a naughty puppy come to haunt you for your sins,’ he said.

‘I don’t care whether you were a cat or a fucking moose in a past life,’ Kurogane told him, and reached over and yanked the blanket from his head: blond hair emerged, tousled, and with it a chuckle, a broad smile. He did wonder, for a moment, if past injury explained the sharpness of that face, the  guarded violence that rose and fell sometimes in those pale eyes. He put the thought aside. He didn’t care. ‘Can you do sudoku?’ he asked. ‘There’s a puzzle book there, just behind you - yeah, there. That moron Yasha does them every day and then fucks them up ’cause he’s an idiot.’

‘Oh, well, then we should leave him a nice friendly message,’ Fai said, flipping to the front of the book, scrabbling for a pen. ‘Here, I’ll just - see, here’s a little kitty leaving him a few clues. Oh, and here I’ll put a mean puppy trying to chew up the boxes because he doesn’t understand how to solve it and has to ask his kitty friend to do it for him -’

‘I know perfectly well how to do fucking sudoku! I just asked if you could do it! Dumbass!’

After they ran out of pages they wrote on post-it notes. By the time they had done, they had assembled a small yellow flip-book of kittens and puppies. Fai fell asleep pressed up against the back of Kurogane’s chair, a pen still dangling from his mouth. Kurogane went to find more blankets. This was all highly irregular.

*

‘The day of the Shigatsu Tsuitachi Inter-Departmental Chair Race (For Science!!) has proven to be fraught with sorrow and rejoicing in equal amounts! A shocking knock-out has just been suffered by the Production Department, whose spot-on formations and super-speedy chair tactics were overcome when Ran-chan and Kimi-chan of the Accounting Department utilised their cool intellect and mad analytical skills to knock the valiant an oh-so-suave Shizu-chan from his chair. Of his victory, I have Kimi-chan on record as having said, “Ha ha ha ha ha ha! I, the great Watanuki-sama, have comprehensively kicked that asshole’s loser butt! Serves him right!” Of his tragic defeat, Shizu-chan, thrice voted Shigatsu Tsuitachi’s Premiere Babe of the Year, and who was last seen seeking solace in the arms of the lovely Hima-chan, said only, “Slow and steady wins the race,” whereupon Kimi-chan had to be bodily restrained by Kazahaya-chan. A truly magnificent event, folks! Also, all accusations of voyeurism and unethical practice by the Management Strategy Office should be strictly disregarded!

‘Now, after many such spectacular spectacles, we move at last onto the final round! For glory! The Marketing Department’s ethereal grace and spectacular good looks combine to make them a formidable team that distracts their opponents with their dazzling beauty and really awesome hair! Seriously, Kohane-chan, you _need_ to tell me what shampoo you’re using because you’ve been looking super cute lately - also, can I maybe borrow that one blue dress of yours? Kobato-chan and I want to do a photoshoot - oh my _God_ , Subaru, what _now_? Oh - yeah, yeah, alright, stick to talking about racing, whatever. Um, the other team’s - oh, oh, cool! The other team’s the PR Department! Woo, yeah! Go, Karura-chan! Kill it! Man, I need to start wearing power suits like that, you look _fabulous_ \- yeah, yeah, go away, Subaru, it’s my mike, I can say what I want - hey!’

‘Ah! Hello! Good, good afternoon, valued employees of the Shigatsu Tsuitachi family! I am Su, um, Sumumera - no, wait. I am Subaragi Sumeru, and I will be your umpire for the remainder of the event! I - oh, no, sorry, I’ve just - I’ve dropped the cue cards, um - oh, thank you, Seishirou-san - no, I’m all right, I just - ah! So, um, the final race! There are. There are racers in it. I’ll, um. I’ll read you their names?’

Far from the general tumult, Fai and Kurogane stood at the end of the long corridor that was serving as a racetrack: Fai leaning heavily on a crutch to which was knotted a wide, red ribbon, and Kurogane trying very hard to look as though he weren’t, in fact, holding the other end of a wide, red, and extremely glittery ribbon. Fai tugged gently on his end: Kurogane heaved a long-suffering sigh and cleared his throat pointedly. Fai beamed and tugged harder. Kurogane tapped his foot.

‘You’re not a very well-trained watchdog, are you?’ Fai murmured, over the static whine of the intercom and the excited babble of the far-away crowd. ‘Good puppies should come when they’re called.’

‘Idiots should shut their mouths and try not to fall on their asses,’ Kurogane warned, nodding at Fai’s crutch. ‘You fall over, I’m not picking you up again.’

‘I’m sure it’ll be quite comfortable down there,’ Fai said, in that same low tone. ‘You could join me, if you liked.’

A low tone sounded, and from the other end of the corridor there came a clattering as the racers set off. Kurogane counted very slowly to ten, and then to a hundred for good measure. Fai hummed quietly to himself: clapped his hands and waved excitedly when the racers rounded the corner, dropped the ribbon, had to scramble to pick it back up in time for Tachibana from the Marketing Department to come hurtling down the corridor on an orthopaedic swivel-chair and spin neatly across the finish-line with an expression of supreme distaste and unruffled poise.

‘Hooray!’ Fai yelled, and popped a pocket of silly string all over Tachibana as little Tomoyo swooped in to snap a picture for the company newsletter and Karura rolled into second place on a spectacular white chair with a distinctly sour look on her face.

‘And, oh, Tachibana-san has - yes, he’s won the race for the Marketing Department!’ Subaru squeaked, nearly dropping the microphone as he rounded the corner together with a great crowd of participants, all hurrying to greet the victor. ‘This, ah, this is a great day for the Marketing Department, and they will surely take their place in company history for being the first winners in the inaugural - is that a word? Did you just make that up? Um, um, all right, the inaugural Shigatsu Tsuitachi Inter-Departmental Chair Race, brackets For Science, and then two exclamation marks?  You can’t _do_ that, Hokuto-chan -’

In the midst of the confusion, a small hand tugged at the bottom of Kurogane’s jacket, and he looked down into a small hopeful face. ‘Good afternoon, Kurogane-san!’ Tomoyo said.

‘Hey, kid,’ he said, quietly, beneath the sounds of celebration, and rested his hand briefly on the top of her head. She smiled. ‘You putting that recorder of yours to good use?’

She nodded excitedly. ‘I’d like to get your opinion on the race for the company newsletter,’ she said, holding up a small pink voice recorder covered in stickers. ‘Did you enjoy the race?’

‘I think it was the dumbest idea we’ve ever had,’ Kurogane said, with a sharp look at Fai, who grinned and fished around in his apparently bottomless pockets for more silly string. ‘But I guess some people had fun, so - yeah, whatever. It was OK.’

She clapped her hands. ‘That’s certainly high praise coming from you, Kurogane-san!’ she said. ‘You’re usually so grouchy!’ Ignoring his protests, she continued, ‘Why did you choose not to participate, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘Ooh! Yes! Let’s get that story!’ Hokuto cried excitedly, half-scrambling over Subaru in her excitement and grabbing the mike. ‘I was so looking forward to a showdown between the brave Kuro-chan and the super-cute Fai-chan, and then you guys didn’t participate! No fair!’

The mike whined and sputtered: a good fifteen or so people turned quite suddenly to consider them both, and Tomoyo’s eyes brightened as she held her recorder expectantly up to Kurogane. Somewhere, a camera flashed. He gaped. ‘Um,’ he said. ‘I just - we’re security, I mean I’m security, so -’ and was hit in the face with a spray of silly string.

‘Surprise!’ Fai sang in his ear, flinging his arms around Kurogane’s neck, and everyone laughed, and Kurogane was still flustered and awkward and covered in confetti and ribbons of yellow crêpe paper, but Fai was in his arms and everyone was grinning and laughing and cheering and sorting out their winnings from both the official pool and a number of smaller, high-stakes, completely off-records pools organising by one or two enterprising would-be bookies, and suddenly Kurogane wanted to laugh, too, or at least crack a smile for perhaps the sixth time in his life.

‘To answer your question, Tomoyo-chan,’ Fai was saying to the small girl, ‘unfortunately, I had a small accident the other night!’ Here he gestured to his crutch with a rueful grimace.

‘Basically this dumbass isn’t allowed to do anything involving chairs for the next year,’ Kurogane muttered, still flushing, still spitting out confetti.

‘It’s nothing serious!’ Fai assured them over the ensuing laughter, as the unmistakable sounds of that Watanuki guy from accounting screeching about the staining properties of champagne began to filter through from the impromptu winner’s circle that had been set up around a water fountain. ‘Just a bit of a sprain. So, Kuro-sama very kindly volunteered to stay with me and be a goalpost! And I think we were great goalposts, and I think it was the best chair-race we’ve ever had!’

‘It’s the _only_ chair-race we’ve ever had, you moron!’ Kurogane snapped at him, and everyone laughed again, so that for a very strange, strong, satisfied second he felt as though he were part of a play, saying just the right words at just the right time to just the right actor, while the audience watching him nodded and grinned and clapped at the pleasure of seeing something clever: so that an odd sensation of camaraderie sprung up in him when Fai giggled and tugged him closer. They were a pair, he realised, suddenly, an office fixture, a standing fact: they were Those Two Guys, they were That Blond Guy and the Security Guard, they were Fai and Kurogane.

And then the tall guy with the pale hair popped a very loud champagne bottle all over Tachibana, and there came a round of cheering and some smattered whoops of laughter, and Watanuki began to bewail the demise of the carpeting, and the cell phone cameras and the glittery pink voice recorders and the bickering Sumeragi twins all turned away in excitement, and Kurogane was left standing in a long beam of sunlight with confetti lodged in his hair and Fai in his arms and a glittery red finish line somehow tangled around their legs all over again, and all he could do was brush the confetti from Fai’s hair with a hand that seemed too clumsy and say, ‘You’re heavy.’

‘Ah! Sorry, Kuro-sama!’ Fai said, quietly: wriggled away, transferred his weight gingerly to his crutch. One corner of his mouth hooked up a little, and he offered Kurogane one of those rare, gentle smiles of his. In the light he was like something out of a movie, something out of a picture-book for kids: a star maiden, a fox, all paper and paint and forced rhymes. ‘Did you have fun?’ he asked. ‘I had fun.’

Kurogane stared at him. His mouth was dry. ‘Biggest waste of time known to man,’ he said.

Fai reached out, pulled a string of crêpe paper from Kurogane’s ear. ‘Oh, Kuro-puppy,’ he said. ‘Whatever _are_ we going to do with you?’

*

‘Fucking _hell_ ,’ Kurogane announced to the security break-room at large.

Gingetsu paused a moment to lay a consolatory hand on his shoulder. ‘I did warn you,’ he said.

*

It was late on a not particularly exciting Friday afternoon, and the offices were mostly empty, when Kurogane sauntered past the Planning Department offices as nonchalantly as humanly possible and walked straight into the exact person he had been studiously avoiding for the past week.

‘Oh, _fuck_ , I mean - shit,’ he said, staring down into a pair of very wide blue eyes. ‘I - ah. Sumeragi said. She said I could come pick up my phone. Because it was. I left it here. Charging.’

‘Ah! Now, don’t be angry, Kuro-puppy, she suggested it!’ Fai said at almost the same time, backing away, then frowned. ‘Sorry? She said she wanted to go out for drinks this evening, and to meet. Ah. Here.’

They stared at each other for a long moment.

‘Oh,’ Kurogane said, finally, for lack of anything else. His heart was thudding painfully hard in his chest, and his hands felt heavy and hot and foreign, all charged with blood and horror: his chest was frankly heaving. With absolutely no forewarning whatsoever, he suddenly found that he was about to make up his mind. ‘Ah, fuck it,’ he said, because that was what he said before he made most decisions. ‘Do you want to - I don’t know, come have a drink anyway?’

Fai’s eyes went very wide for half a second, and his smile grew very tight and very trapped. Then, ‘Well, there’s no reason we shouldn’t,’ he said, brightly. ‘Nothing wrong with colleagues having a good, old-fashioned chat in a nice bar on a Friday evening!’

‘Yeah,’ Kurogane said, and then couldn’t. ‘Colleagues. That. Exactly. Fuck. I.’

‘I just,’ Fai agreed, stumblingly, and then stopped. ‘Only, you see -’

‘But then,’ Kurogane continued.

‘We’d -’

‘Exactly - ’

‘Which would only -’

‘I know you’re not even interested - ’

‘So,’ Fai concluded. ‘Wait, what?’

‘So,’ Kurogane agreed. ‘Hey, what are you -?’

For in one swift movement, Fai had knotted one hand into Kurogane’s tie, slipped the other to the nape of his neck, and drawn him down into vicious kiss.

Kurogane drew in a sharp, painful breath through his nose and fell into it as though it were sweet water: wrapped one arm shuddering tight around Fai’s narrow waist and fumbled frantically for the doorknob with his free hand. They swayed on the threshold a moment, holding close and tight to each other as a knot the door swung open and a long light of late sunlight struck Fai’s back, warmed Kurogane’s hands, pulled their shadows out long across the floor.

‘I’ve been _interested_ since the moment I met you,’ Fai hissed bitter enough to taste against his lips, the tips of those thin cold fingers pressed sharp against his skull, and that, for Kurogane, was all: he put his hands to Fai’s jaw and kissed him heavy and slow, wanting only in that moment to warm him. His heart was beating painfully fast in his chest: his head and hands felt shaking full of blood, his mouth of gold. Fai tugged him back and back and back into the little office, slammed the door, tugged and tugged until he was pressed right up against the nearest desk.

Kurogane broke the kiss a moment to brace his hands on either side of Fai, frantically shoving staplers and paperwork out of the way as he did so, clumsy and uncaring because it was happening, it was here and it was real and it was happening and his hands were shaking with need, and he wasn’t sure how to match the overwhelming immediacy of reality with anything even vaguely approaching the care and consideration that had always accompanied fantasy. Fai smirked and grabbed hold of Kurogane’s tie, yanked him down hard: bit once and sharply at Kurogane’s bottom lip, so that Kurogane faltered and caught his breath, suddenly blindingly hard, then drew away: seated himself on the table and leaned back.

‘Don’t you say it,’ Kurogane said, breath rough, chest aching sharp: arms shaking as they strained to hold his weight against Fai’s relentless pull. ‘Don’t you _fucking_ say it, you bastard, I know you’re going to -’

‘Oh, but you’re being _such_ a good boy,’ Fai told him, lowly, and then gave one last, sharp tug: hooked his leg around Kurogane’s waist when he growled and pulled him down.

Fai was unexpectedly aggressive, all narrow greedy focus and insistency. His mouth was hot and his teeth and nails sharp, the lithe snap and surge of his muscles close and coveted against Kurogane’s chest. Kurogane fumbled to catch at Fai’s shirt, felt the rise and fall of those narrow ribs beneath his own hard palms, was pleased to feel his flesh somewhat warmer through the thin fabric. Fai gasped as the buttons came undone in frustratingly slow succession, bared his teeth in a hiss against Kurogane’s lips as thumbs found his nipples. Kurogane grinned and pressed down hard, moved to bite at Fai’s neck, which called up an answering shudder: Fai’s chest began to heave, and his hips to grind slow against Kurogane’s.

‘Wait, wait,’ Kurogane said, ‘wait, we can - I - let me -’

Fai shuddered again at the hiss of Kurogane’s breath against his throat: looked very deliberately into his eyes and rolled his hips again. He said, ‘Surprise me.’

Kurogane stared down at him: flushed as he had never seen him, smile sly and mocking: and then knotted one hand sharply into that mess of fine blond hair: pulled, hard, to expose Fai’s white throat, bit down hard. Fai whined. Kurogane tightened his grip until it must have been painful, sucked sharp at the soft skin, but Fai only breathed harder. Settling his thumbs firmly into the hollows of Fai’s collarbones, Kurogane pushed his shoulders roughly against the desk, bit and kissed and licked at his nipples, his sternum, the long smooth trembling planes of his belly, the tender flesh between his hips. He fumbled to unbuckle Fai’s belt with no great finesse, but caught Fai’s wrists roughly when he reached down to help, dug his fingers hard enough to bruise, at which Fai shivered and lay back, arching up in delight. From there Kurogane fairly ripped the belt away, undid the trousers without qualm: knelt clumsily before him.

The noises Fai made under the touch of Kurogane’s mouth were thin, half-silent things. Kurogane focused: put all thoughts of Fai’s pink bitten lips from his mind. Fai’s fingers flexed and flexed in his hair as he worked. It was here, it was happening, it had happened. It was strange and good and full of promise. That sense of this being a sensible thing, a logical and obvious thing, was very strong: Kurogane was not much one for romance of any sort, and so he recognised this more a sort of allegiance, a confirmation of trust. Fai’s breathing sped up, and his hips began to buck: he gave a quiet wrung-off whimper and collapsed, suddenly, into stillness. Kurogane swallowed.

‘So, you - you still want that drink?’ Kurogane huffed when he could speak again: dragged the back of his hand over his mouth and glanced down at Fai, looked hastily away.

Fai laughed: gave a long and obscene groan, pushed himself up with arms that shook visibly. His eyes met Kurogane’s. Kurogane swallowed. With one careful, sinuous movement, Fai leaned in to fold his arms around Kurogane’s neck, drag his fingers through Kurogane’s hair, press himself close against Kurogane’s chest. Kurogane bowed his head to Fai’s breast: kissed the collarbone, the bruised throat, the temple. They stood as marks less of affection than of respect: in this endeavour they were allied, he saw now.

‘Oh, no,’ Fai breathed: pressed one hand to Kurogane’s chest, then slid it palm-flat down the very neglected and rather desperate front of Kurogane’s trousers, pressed hard. ‘Oh, _no_ , Kuro-sama. You’ve been such a good boy. I think you need to be rewarded.’

*

‘That is not how you fucking do crosswords!’ Kurogane yelled, and threw a pen across the room. Hokuto made a spectacular saving dive, and the impromptu missile bounced neatly off her beret.

‘Even though Fai-chan and I are rivals for your heart, my comrade he reminds, and I will defend him against al mortals blows!’ she cried, and collapsed dramatically into Fai’s lap.

‘I think Hokuto-chan and I are _much_ better suited for each other, anyway,’ Fai decided, and hugged Hokuto properly. ‘Will you elope with me, my dearest?’

‘Oh, I thought you’d never ask!’ she cried, and kissed him on the cheek, leaving behind a large purple smudge of lipstick, pirouetted away to mark off _Elope With Fai-Chan_ on the big to-do list she had pinned to the message-board above her desk. ‘Hurrah! We’ll have a seaside wedding, and then a raging sea-monster will emerge from the deeps and devour us all. It’ll be so romantic!’

‘Across, eight letters, _kinship_ ,’ Kurogane insisted, then yanked the newspaper away from Fai. ‘No, _don’t_ you dare, you fucker, you’ll only draw fucking kittens all over it again.’

‘Well, where else are my tiny imaginary kitten friends going to live if not inside a crossword?’ Fai demanded, and, while Hokuto was still occupied with her to-do list, leaned in very close and reached for the newspaper. Kurogane held out for several breathless seconds before dropping his gaze to Fai’s lips, whereupon Fai launched a devastating tickle attack and seized the newspaper, pausing only to plant a swift, almost unnoticeable kiss on Kurogane’s nose.

Kurogane stilled, blinked, spluttered: yelled, ‘Give that back, you sneaky thief!’

‘I shan’t,’ Fai decided. ‘You clearly need to give more thought to the plight of homeless imaginary kittens, you big silly watchdog, you.’ He glanced down at the puzzle, rolled his eyes. ‘And anyway, the answer’s obviously _affinity_.’


End file.
